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Comment by twoodfin | Hacker News Reader

This seems like no big deal. Nvidia creates a preferred partner co-branding program, and insists that an OEM’s half of the branding effort be Nvidia-specific, presumably so Nvidia isn’t spending marketing dollars promoting OEM brands that include AMD GPUs.

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This program goes beyond branding efforts, according to the report[1] the partner program includes:

- high-effort engineering engagements

- early tech engagement

- launch partner status

- game bundling

- sales rebate programs

- social media and PR support

- marketing reports

- Marketing Development Funds (MDF)

Conditionally including MDF as part of this program is behavior similar to what caused the government action against Intel by the FTC:

"The FTC settlement applies to Central Processing Units, Graphics Processing Units and chipsets and prohibits Intel from using threats, bundled prices, or other offers to exclude or hamper competition or otherwise unreasonably inhibit the sale of competitive CPUs or GPUs. The settlement also prohibits Intel from deceiving computer manufacturers about the performance of non-Intel CPUs or GPUs."[2]

1: https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/03/08/geforce_partner_p...

2: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2010/08/ftc-s...

Yes, but Intel still didnt pay the fine (in EU) and keeps doing the same old under new clothes. As a reseller you regularly get extraordinary deals from Intel. For example for every highend CPU + mobo combo sold intel "gifts" you an SSD = hidden heavy rebate on expensive CPU, had this one at least couple of times.

It is not over, Intel appealed so it dragged things along for years, I hope they get what they deserve.

The main problem was not the gifts or discounts for selling Intel CPU, there was conditions like do not sell any AMD or less then 5% AMD.

Part of settlement was prohibition of bundled discounts, so now they offer you gifts and prizes :/

That's one way to look at it, but it also locks AMD out of existing gaming brands like ROG and Aorus.

It's up to those companies if they want to go that far and sign on with GPP then, which seems fine to me. I'm not a fan of these brutal tactics on NV's part, but I can't say I have strong feelings on it. It's not illegal so it's either worth it to the vendors or it's not sufficient enough to be.

Disclaimer: I'm not really partial to any of these companies (you can hardly state anything without some fan of either coming after you). I started with a Commodore, then mostly Matrox & S3 graphics from '89 till the 3dfx Voodoo 4MB ('95), used Nvidia from 00-07 and AMD from 09-17, now I'm back on NV and kind of regretting it. Mostly because of driver issues, after a good long pretty much problem free stint on my last Radeon that lasted me a whopping 8 years. I've purchased dozens of NV cards, by the most from any vendor that I've used.

If anything, my favorite is 3dfx since seeing GLQuake in 1995 on a Voodoo card is an experience that simply can't be duplicated. Everything is a letdown and iterative since then. I'm thankful I could experience that at the time when it was a meaningful improvement. Zeus knows gameplay hasn't improved much since the 90s. But I certainly miss my nice 8 year stint of updating to each WHQL release without major issues and have zero reservations about going back to AMD.

You still can see that something anti-competitive is happening here, a company has a dominant position and abuses it, ASUS,MSI and the others have a free choice between selling NVIDIA products with all the benefits or being pushed at the end of the queue so probably always having not enough GPUs to sell, no discounts etc, so basically have a free choice between continuing to make money or getting a bit financial hit, it is a bad choice and a for profit company will chose profit not the right thing to do.

The situation got so ridiculous that AMD cards were removed from gaming section on the sellers pages, one such seller commented that AMD cards are not for gaming even if they themselves packaged it with the name "AMD gaming"

And other big issue is that this GPP program that NVIDIA calls it transparent is under an NDA and no one come forward with details to calm things down.

It is not AMD vs NVIDIA but about preserving this poor competition, we only have 2 players, let keep as it is if we can't have more.

This does feel like the equivalent of Microsoft's old "pay way less per copy if you just pay us for every computer you ship instead of pay us for every computer that actually ship's with Microsoft". I was at microsoft when that was going (working as a dev with nothing to do with this). but that was really effective at getting companies to be less interested in shipping other OS'.

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